Hello there!
How are you? I have been at the end of most art projects that it seems I am popping one out every day when they are the 'fruits of labour' started months and weeks ago. In the present case, years ago.
In this post, I am going to explain as best as I can what my ASYNC project IRRITABILITY is about. It begins with the original idea in 2020 when I published a video art titled IRRITABILITY. At first instance, It was designed as part of a card collection which would have had different versions. However, it was not practical for me to mint each card version. Coincidentally, video NFTs became possible so I opted for an animated MP4 version.
Still, it was always somewhere at the back of my mind that I did not capture the vision I had had.
Fast forward to 2022, I found myself in the same conditions that gave birth to IRRITABILITY. At the core is a tale of survival, only the strong survive and thrive by building the requisite mechanisms.
Why would anyone need mechanisms for survival? We come to IRRITABILITY, one of the characteristics of living things being their ability to respond to stimuli. A fantastic example would be the 'touch me not plant, Mimosa pudica, which forever fascinates me. So then stimulus provokes a reaction. On thinks of stimulus in different ways too. Passive or active, consistent, progressive or a one time spell. The response can also be classified as passive or active, consistent...
Broken down, I envision different levels of response as well as manifestations as a result of stimuli. This can be brought to a psychological point of view, how the external world and happening can affect us internally.
I also see this through another point of view using the analogy of boiling water. Think of the heat applied, the temperature rises and if the heat continues(consistent, progressive), we might reach the boiling point. On this, the psychological connotations are easy to pick.
Another end through which this concept was developed is what happens when you apply strain(stimulus) to an elastic band. Now if consistent and progressive, you get to the yield point also known as the elastic limit. Cease stress on our metaphorical elastic band and it returns to its state of normalcy. Further stress and our band would lose the ability to go back to normal and a little further is the breaking point.
As earlier stated, this is a tale of survival. So what if 'stress' and 'heat' is unavoidable then control and management become an essential factor upon which different mechanisms are developed (mostly at an individual level). Some of us like to listen to music to 'calm down, others take a more confrontational route. Yet, some go over the elastic limit but fail to yield. They evolved, better equipped if not completely immune.
Whether or not this makes any sense is another matter. It was something I thought about and build conceptual art on. I do hope I have answered the 'what's the big idea' of IRRITABILITY.
https://twitter.com/vokesart/status/1498377799568179212?s=20&t=a6zPzLCR_p8Dih4Gnv7Fiw
- vokesart
And that's all for now folks.
Take care and stay safe
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